The administrative remedy process is a roadblock to challenging inhumane prison conditions. With the help of advocates, people in prison are fighting back.
As a way to challenge the inhumane conditions of their imprisonment, people behind bars have made remarkable use of the very legal system that criminalizes and incarcerates them. During the late twentieth century, that activism saw success in the court system in various ways, but these landmark cases and resulting litigation soon met with backlash from prison administrations and policymakers. Their response led to stringent restrictions that limited the ability of people in prison to access legal resources, work with lawyers, and file lawsuits.
One federal law passed in the mid-­1990s institutionalized the mother of all bureaucratic stopgaps: the administrative remedy process. Today, in just about all carceral settings, an incarcerated person must navigate the complex process of administrative remedy to address harassment, poor conditions, and other deprivations. This process involves submitting formal complaints and exhausting appeals before it is permissible to seek judicial intervention.
Since 2020 a new organization, The Remedy Project, has been working to transform the possibilities of the administrative remedy process by wielding it as a tool to challenge the power of the ...